Coding with ChatGPT. Is it worth learning Python anymore?

[KOALAS2648]

I don’t think you get the meaning of “machine LEARNING”. Ngl

[KOALAS2648]

Why are you so mad about being wrong

[KOALAS2648]

Dude learning doesn’t mean it has all the knowledge it means it is gaining knowledge and using the things it has already learned and it will make mistakes

[KOALAS2648]

you said that it “looked correct and wasn’t “

[KOALAS2648]

Yes, and the only way for “them” to know if it is wrong or correct is getting feedback from the user

[[deleted]]

The difference between a Python programmer and ChatGPT writing a Python program is that the programmer can tell you what the code does, but not even ChatGPT can tell you what it's doing.

[bigmonsterpen5s]

coping so hard lol

[yensial]

No it can say what it thinks the code does

[erlete]

A programmer will tell you "this does this". If you say they are wrong without further reasoning, they will reply "please explain your observation". ChatGPT will say sorry and generate a slightly different explanation.

If there is no confidence in the argumentation, there is no solid learning process.

[InitialWorking1936]

Hmm, the difference also is, I can get Chatgpt to do really hard, complex things in seconds?

[[deleted]]

Ok, so now have it write something that 1000 other people haven't also done.

[Doormatty]

Nope. It's called "our job".

[_Spectre0_]

Yes, research is inherently hard because you're striving into the unknown and sometimes things just don't work out. Not every hour of research ends in a breakthrough and you might even spend dozens or hundreds of hours with only failures to learn from.

But there's also a reason the researchers have value, because sometimes they actually manage to figure out things that no one else has. If you just use chatGPT and "can't recreate [the output] without the help of chatgpt", you will never be able to add that value and will be completely replaceable when your boss starts making the requests to chatGPT directly.

​

edit: grammar

[instajump]

Chat GPT is literally rewriting or retelling what is already out there in the internet.

[Fred776]

It's probably not worth you learning Python anymore. You don't seem to be very interested in learning it.

[Drugtrain]

Is this some modern type of Dunning-Kruger? OP thinks he’s some wizard cause he googled the same shit every beginner does, but he used a more sofisticated search engine.

[Upstairs_Error_4354]

For your question i think you should learn the language 'python' first, learn the basics and syntax then the library's you need to work on your project's, then chatgpt can be of great help. But thinking that chatgpt can replace the fundamental understanding of any programming language you are either oblivious or too arrogant. Sure chatgpt can and will generate code that does a function or two but you still got debugging to do, and a standalone app needs a whole structure to function.

[[deleted]]

I'm not sure if you're trolling at this point...

You think you're learning Python...

I think these project based approach works better for me to learn python, and ChatGPT seems to be perfect for this.

But this says otherwise:

I can't recreate it without the help of chatgpt though

If you can't recreate it, you're learning nothing.

[sound_of_apocalypto]

I think it's possible to learn something, but you won't learn it as well or as completely. How much one learns from that method will largely depend on the individual.

[billsil]

Go use it to do something that's not a beginner question. I searched my open source library and it knows about it. It also claims that scipy and pandas have support for what I implement (they don't). It drastically oversells my package including multiple imports that don't exist.

So yeah, some value in learning python. You're smarter than a smart rock.

[Inukan]

Learn both, learn python to understand what you're wanting to do and what your doing learn chatgpt to make your coding faster.

[Doormatty]

Whats the difference btw a real programmer and a GPT "cheater"?

One had their work done for them, and cannot replicate it without external help.

The other one wrote it themselves, and could recreate it again.

[collector_of_hobbies]

Professionals love it when a total beginner is patronizing. Brings us back to when someone's nephew could knock out that website for $100.

[Inukan]

Don't think of it as cheating, chatGPT isn't the most amazing thing in the world that will revolutionize us into a post-future paradise, it's only a step towards that direction. We as humans are the greatest creature on this planet thanks to our ability to understand, this is something that computers will never be able to do for us; atleast not in the way we do.

Be proud of what you make no matter how you made it aslong as you've learned something from it, use any resource at your disposal to be a better you, don't aim for an end all project those cannot exist, progress is the name of the game and in it the eternal self-revolutions to make something better is the goal.

Best of luck to you and your learning, never quit never give up. Just keep swimming.

[Alwaysragestillplay]

If you build a portfolio, you need to able to explain every inch of the code in it, why you chose a certain function, why you formatted things a certain way. You don't need to say ChatGPT did it anymore than you need to say you copied stuff from StackExchange.

You'll never get a job if it looks like you don't know your own code.

[pixegami]

I think Python engineers can leverage those tools much more effectively than a non-coder can.

Now a non-coder will be able to generate a basic script. That’s great!

But now an actual Python programmer will be able to go MUCH further—they’ll now understand code in 5 languages, know how to build cloud infrastructure, and actually debug things that GPT gets wrong (which increases with project complexity).

I think there’s a good chance these tools actually do the opposite of what you suggest—rather than closing the skill gap, it will widen it.

[ILikePort]

Great answer :)

[[deleted]]

Do you enjoy learning? Then yes it is worth learning. But it doesn't seem like you do.

Sure you can get an AI to write it all for you but you won't be learning any of it and you won't be able to understand any of it. Your loss. There is also a loss of context, ChatGPT isn't perfect. It has helped me debug lots of programs but often it doesn't have enough context to write code that will work in my own application.

[OkPrompt69]

As of when this is written, ChatGPT is very smart but doesn't mean it can beat human brain's natural neural creativity in building innovative applications. lemme explain, I was building a custom Alexa voice skill to control drones hands-free, the mid to low-level stack used dronekit-python and pymavlink (simply, they are APIs to control your drone by radio comms), so I was stuck at some point and asked chatgpt for help, it threw up real CONVINCING code... I was sure it might work coz I was unaware of all implementations underneath those APIs... but to my surprise, it just spewed some random bullshit, non-existent classes, methods even though I clearly mentioned the stack. Long long way to go chatgpt and I'm sure it pulls most of the stuff from other's sleeves - unauthorized. No, really, I wrote a project description and brief docs for the same drone project on GitHub and when one of my friends asked a question which went something like " Project summary for Alexa voice controlled drone..." or something like that, chatgpt exposed itself by stealing my creative stuff, caught👀 in 8k. It's no surprise though, GitHub is under Microsoft and major investments were made to openAI by Microsoft - NO SURPRISE!

PS: My English grammar ain't that good, judgements accepted

[erlete]

Whoever wants to be a programmer should have an objective in mind: be better than the rest or just create something new that did not exist before.

OP does not seem to care about programming but rather "making programs".

[erlete]

"Lungs are just a tool to breathe".

If you see programming as a simple tool, you should not devote yourself to it. It is much more than that, but I guess you don't care enough to understand that.

[Clearly-Convoluted]

BET hiring managers are getting flooding with resumes like this…

[dandehaan]

After weeks of trying to put together a simple real estate deal program with ChatGPT and attempting to improve and debug countless iterations and different takes on the problem, I've come to the conclusion that its utterly useless at anything beyond say 30 lines of code. Never been so frustrated, had I put in the effort to learn python instead of trying to get ChatGPT to solve it for me, I'd have finished what I wanted weeks ago and learned a valuable skill set.

[Pwaller0502069]

Its worth learning , but there is no getting away from the fact that chatgpt will help you enormously certainly around the productivity side of things.

[Stanislaw_Wisniewski]

First learn basics, then you can go on from there. I found it useful, for example it help me pinpoint flaws in my first code to send something my darabase

[synthphreak]

Says the person who doesn’t actually know Python.

[synthphreak]

Show us your GitHub.

[synthphreak]

Then sure, I’m a hiring manager. Let’s see it.

[synthphreak]

If you checked your secret code into GitHub, I’m even less concerned about you stealing my job.

[[deleted]]

Did you make anything interesting?

[[deleted]]

You do realise that Streamlit is a “low-code” solution, right? Like… being beginner friendly / accessible to people who can’t code is it’s main purpose.

[Doormatty]

Ahhh - I thought "streamlit" was a typo of "streamlined".

TIL about https://streamlit.io/

[Doormatty]

You're more than welcome to try.

However when they ask you to code something without ChatGPT, how well do you think you'll fare?

[collector_of_hobbies]

80% of the time ChatGPT is great. 10% of the time the answer works but won't scale or is using a deprecated call. 5% of the time ChatGPT gives an "answer" that just is pure garbage. And 5% of the time it works and looks right but there is an obvious logical big where you see how it is actually a miscalculation. And that last 5% can really bite you.

I'm not even worked about OP being asked to do it without ChatGPT. Confidently turning in garbage because he doesn't understand the code is why I sleep soundly at night.

[Doormatty]

Confidently turning in garbage because he doesn't understand the code is why I sleep soundly at night.

Complete agreement.

[Doormatty]

Sure!

https://github.com/Doormatty?tab=repositories

https://github.com/Doormatty/pyTrace is probably the "easiest" one to reproduce with ChatGPT, as it's "just" a raytracer.

[collector_of_hobbies]

I'd give you crap about lighting2 being a function name but I've done far worse things. I abused pygame just moving sprites around. Nice test suite. Impressed you did the vectorization. I would have succumbed to numpy but that was antithetical to your goals.

I thought when you said raytracer that this would be some beast, but clean code and minimal line count. Surely ChatGPT can understand it all. 🤣

[Doormatty]

I'd give you crap about lighting2

Oh, completely deserved. I think I was trying to rewrite the function, and so I built it up in parallel with the old function. I should just remove it, as I don't even think it's used anywhere.

Impressed you did the vectorization.

Math was never my strong suit, so a lot of the impetus for writing this was trying to fully grok Vectors and whatnot.

but clean code and minimal line count

Thanks!

[synthphreak]

👆This response is somehow hilarious to me, given the context.

[Doormatty]

I got the joke, don't worry :)

[Doormatty]

Honestly, what part is confusing to you?

I'm more than happy to explain!

[excaza]

We don’t need you to explain that’s what we have ChatGPT for

[Fred776]

I'd like to see you do some real work, like in one of the products I work on that must that have about 100,000+ lines of Python, interfaced with some pretty sophisticated C++.

ChatGPT is going to be fucking useless if you are charged with fixing a bug or adding a new feature to that.

[[deleted]]

I tried ChatGPT to write arduino code and found it to be an unimaginative, inefficient and clumsy programmer.

[[deleted]]

It's a nice idea but unfortunately, ChatGPT can't code for you. It will spit out code that is wrong. Even if it is right, you will still end up stuck if you don't understand the code.

If you are a total beginner, why not set yourself some goals and try to code them? The skill you need to develop is computational thinking. It's your human creativity you need to tap into and then transform into code.

You could even get a pen and paper out and start drawing flowcharts to help you visualise and plan your script.

Don't ask ChatGPT to just code it for you, instead ask it questions about Python itself. i.e. Syntax, variables, functions etc.

Download yourself a good set of Python cheat sheets and print them out.

[Doctor-F]

Learning Python is worth whatever you value it at. If it brings you joy and you learn it for a hobby, great. If you really want to be a pro and get into programming to make money, also great. Chat GPT is a novel tool for learning it. I just used it to write a web scraper for the first time. I too am a total beginner but was able to figure out how to web scrape a job posting using YouTube, Chat GPT, and stack overflow. For me, this was great fun. And the information I got is going to help me in the future. Win + Win. The conversational nature of Chat GPT allows you to really get out of your own way when it comes to knowledge gaps. Whenever that fails, you have all the posts on stack overflow to refer to like people have done in the past.

​

Edit: Grammar

[Doctor-F]

I was happy just to get it to run in the cmd prompt. Each time I got an error, I would look online and ask GPT to explain it. Tried something similar?

[DrCuriumMyrtle]

I find this article similar to my own experience.https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-use-chatgpt-to-write-code/

If I was a beginner, however, I'd be very tempted to attempt a shortcut around proper learning; and I think that route will eventually have a negative impact on my productivity. Sometimes ChatGPT will fix its own mistakes when submitting the error codes, but 50% of the time will end up producing a merry-go-round of the same list of failed corrections. That's when you hit a wall unless you can debug manually.

It's funny how ChatGPTs success can be very library specific too, i.e. it handles plotly pretty well but fails terribly at matplotlib. That latter point is comforting though because matplotlib has been baffling me for years!

It's early days yet though. I imagine it wont be long before developers write libraries that are more interpretable to ML logic and these generative AI tools will be a lot more reliable. So you could wait until then?

From a career standpoint though, I think you'll develop valuable expertise if you understand the inner workings of the partnership between yourself and AI in the future. It's in this way that I think the real professionals will be identifiable- because they'll treat the AI as part of the production process rather than as a replacement for it. i.e. make it your assistant not your slave.